The use of a mechanical member for marking a place in an item of written material, such as a book, is probably as old as writing itself. Such devices include bookmarks, index tabs, and in more traditional items of printed matter, such as bibles, ribbons bound into the spine of the book.
Perhaps the most common example of such a device is a common bookmark, which generally consists of a strip of light cardboard, typically about three centimeters in width and ten centimeters long. It is common for such bookmarks to have a wide range of different types of printed matter on them.
Such printed matter may simply comprise decorative designs or an inspirational saying. Such bookmarks are used by simply being placed between the pages of the book, typically near the spine of the book, to mark a particular page in the book to which a reader wishes to return, or which contains some item of information to which the reader expects to want to refer back.
Bookmarks probably came into use as quickly as some book reader with a scrap of paper, discovered, undoubtedly ages ago, that he could mark his place with it. It would appear that the use of a ribbon secured to the binding at the spine of a book was also a very early innovation, which prevented the ribbon bookmark from being dissociated from the book and lost.
More recently, relatively stiff materials have been used for bookmarks, such as plastic. Accordingly, some bookmarks have a tongue cut into them, allowing the tongue to be placed on one side of a page and the rest of the bookmark on the other side of the same page, in much the manner of a paper clip, allowing the bookmark to remain secured to the page even when the book is opened and the page moved. This also allows placement of the bookmark in a secure fashion at a wide variety of positions remote from the spine or binding of the book.
As can be seen from the above, the structure of bookmarks has remained substantially unchanged for many years. Not surprisingly, when innovation did come, it was slow to be appreciated.
In particular, a few years ago, scientists doing research on adhesive came across an adhesive which, while it was quite stable, was not very aggressive, and thus did not stay in place permanently. It was a failed experiment, and the material was not much unlike other rejected adhesives. Nevertheless, one of the people who was working with that adhesive was involved with a church choir and began to consider the possibility of using the adhesive to hold bookmarks in place to mark hymns which were scheduled to be sung at the church services.
This was tried, successfully, and the idea evolved into a movable adhesive note. These were manufactured and the research team believed it to be a meritorious product for inclusion in the company's line. Nevertheless, their employer, 3M Corporation had decided against putting an effort behind this product. Accordingly, the research and development people involved with the product distributed their samples of the product to the clerical staff in management. After the management staff became accustomed to using the product, the supply was cut off and the clamoring of the former users of the new product eventually lead management to institute an aggressive and remarkably successful marketing program for this new product. Included in the product line at this time is a plastic marking device intended for use as indexes and flags.
In similar fashion, pages carrying adhesive members have also been bound into books and intended for use as flags. Such flags are adhered to the outside edge of a page in a book and are color coded in a number of colors and include blank spaces for the entry of information which the flag is intended to help the user relocate easily. In accordance with such systems, the page carrying the adhesive members may also be removed.
The above systems suffer from a number of inadequacies, however, which the inventive system does address. First, the flags contain no application specific information and thus require users to develop a system to use the flags. In some cases, this may be preferred, but especially in certain consumer related contexts, organization and ready provision of a working system are essential to success. This is believed to be particularly the case with systems meant to facilitate and encourage purchasing of goods by the consumer.
Still yet another failing of some of the prior art is the likelihood that a page of adhesive members will not be used because it is bound into the book. In the case of a catalog, this would decrease the ability of the catalog to function as a product locating tool, as once a product is located, if its position is not securely marked, and the catalog is closed, the position would be lost.
Even in the case where the page of adhesive markers is removable from the catalog, once removed, it can easily be lost, and thus compromise the effectiveness of the system.